Yasmim Flores (São Paulo, Brazil, 1985) is a visual artist, performer, art educator and a mother. She lives and works between Rotterdam, the Netherlands and São Paulo, Brazil. Yasmim’s research focuses on the integration of different disciplines such as drawing, painting, dance, music and installations. Because she grew up in the backstage area of theatres, surrounded by musicians, Yasmim was exposed to the rituals of performance from an early age.] Her work is rooted in the practice of drawing as a gesture that involves the entire body in an intuitive process, using improvisation and a connection to the present moment through breathing and specific postures. The resulting work is often as much the trace of an ephemeral process as a profound exploration of corporal and organic forms that reference the female body. Yasmim regularly collaborates with other artists and is part of the performance duo YaGe with musician and composer Angelo Ursini. She graduated in Visual Arts at Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (FAAP, São Paulo, 2008), and also completed a specialization at École Nationale de Beaux-Arts (ENSBA) in Paris in 2009. As a visual artist and performer, Yasmim participated in a number of collective exhibitions in the Netherlands, France and Brazil. Her workshops have been presented at cultural centres and museums in São Paulo such as MAM Museum of Modern Art-SP, Itaú Cultural and SESCs; and in Rio de Janeiro at the visual arts school Parque Lage.

On Monday, the 17th of June, in collaboration with m/other voices Yasmim Flores will open up her artistic practice and present her current questions:“How we can be creative with the child-care demands? How we can incorporate the child in the space of work? How to put into the artwork the changes that your body, mind and soul experienced in labor and birth?”

Rania Atef (1988) is an Egyptian multidisciplinary visual artist whose work explores the notions of play and craft across a wide range of mediums including: painting, sculpture, installation and video. She obtained her Bachelor degree in Product design from the faculty of Applied Arts in 2011 and is currently enrolled in MASS Alexandria 2018/2019 program for Contemporary Art. Atef has participated in a number of local and international exhibitions and festivals.

On Monday, the 8th of April, in collaboration with m/other voices and Upominki Rania will present her artistic practice and current project ‘Do I Look Like a Seahorse’ , reflecting on her experiences of motherhood, both as an experience and an institution within her native Arab context.

‘Dear friend’, a performative reading of letters across time,written by Rachel Epp Buller and performed together with the artists Deirdre M. Donoghue, Barbara Phillip, and Weronika Zielinska-Klein. This performative reading of letters and epistolary texts considers how feminist maternal relations of care and attunement in the present, and a willingness to listen to voices from the past, might help us to radically reorient our ways of relational being for the future.

Doors will open at 18:00, the performance commences at 19:00 and lasts for 1 hour. Before the performance there will be soup served and afterwards the bar will be open.

Please reserve in advance via: info@upominki.nl

Dr. Rachel Epp Buller, a feminist art historian, printmaker, book artist, professor and mother of three, whose art and scholarship often speak to these intersections. Her writings on art and the maternal include Reconciling Art and Mothering (Ashgate/Routledge) and the forthcoming Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design, and Maternity (Demeter).Her current creative work explores letter-writing as a radical act of care and listening across time. Her curatorial projects often involve collaboration, across disciplines and across countries. She is a Fulbright Scholar, a board member of the National Women’s Caucus for Art (US), a regional coordinator of the international Feminist Art Project, and current Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Design at Bethel College (US).

Dr. Rachel Epp Buller, a feminist art historian, printmaker, book artist, professor and mother of three, whose art and scholarship often speak to these intersections. Her writings on art and the maternal include Reconciling Art and Mothering (Ashgate/Routledge) and the forthcoming Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design, and Maternity (Demeter).Her current creative work explores letter-writing as a radical act of care and listening across time. Her curatorial projects often involve collaboration, across disciplines and across countries. She is a Fulbright Scholar, a board member of the National Women’s Caucus for Art (US), a regional coordinator of the international Feminist Art Project, and current Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Design at Bethel College (US).

On Wednesday, the 21st of November, hosted at and in collaboration with Upominki, Rachel will present her current project Taking Care, and reflect on her interdisciplinary practice as a mother, artist, scholar and print maker.

The last guest speaker of the BEAR lecture series is the Chinese artist Huang Jing Yuan (1979, Guangxi). She is a participant of 'Theater 44 and 'On Practice', as well as the initiator of "Writing • Mother", an on-going communal writing project with the ambition of discovering the potential of a feminist critique through the lens of family life.Huang Jing Yuan was born in 1979, of Zhuang minority descent. She received a BFA from Concordia University (Montreal) in 2005 and a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. Since her return to China in 2010, her work has focused on the contradictions within Chinese society, and disconnections between China and the world. Two major series were produced during this period: the "Confucius City Project" and "I Am Your Agency. Since 2014, concerned over the diminution of a civil society under the Xi administration, Huang has worked with the idea of socialist realism, attempting to subvert the key mechanics of this historically complex genre. Notable projects from this period of work include "Civility Trilogy," "Invitation of Models," and "Mao's Love Letter." Since 2017, her exhibitions and residencies have focused on exploring the conflicted inner strength of people in the provincial setting. Her first film “Solutions” is made during this period.

Please note the lecture will be held at the Artez auditorium and not at Arnhem museum, due to the current museum renovations. Doors will be closed as the lecture commences.

Lena Simicis aperformance practitioner, scholar and pedagogue, born in Dubrovnik, Croatia, living in Liverpool, UK. She is a co-organizer of The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home and Reader in Drama at Edge Hill University, UK. The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home is an art activist initiative run from her home together with Gary Anderson and their four children Neal, Gabriel, Sid and James. Together with her umbrella arts project Maternal Matters which collects a number of maternal video artworks and performances, The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home has functioned as Lena’s methodological frame and artwork for her creative processes and outputs. Her autobiographical performance practice is informed by feminist discourse and its relation to everyday lived experience, memory and fantasy. Recent artist publications include: 4 Boys [for Beuys] (2016), Five: 2008 – 2012 (2014),a book documenting the first five years of the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home), The Mums and Babies Ensemble: A Manual(2015), Foundations with Free University of Liverpool (2012), Blood & Soil: we were always meant to meet… performance document, with Jennifer Verson (2011) and Maternal Matters and Other Sisters Artist Catalogue (2009).

On the 23rd of November, during a m/other voices 'Field Trip' hosted by Upominki, Lena will both introduce us to her practice within the 'Institute for Art and Practice of Dissent at Home’ and narrate this part of her transdisciplinary practice through a contextual framing of ‘maternal practice’.

THE MOTHERNISTS II:Who Cares for the 21st Century?An international symposium on care work and intergenerational feminist knowledge-sharing held in conjunction with the exhibition 'Mothernizing ANA: Who Cares for the Future?' The symposium is co-organized by Lise Haller Baggesen and Deirdre M. Donoghue and is co-hosted by Astrid Noacks Ateliers and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

THE MOTHERNISTS II:Who Cares for the 21st Century?An international symposium on care work and intergenerational feminist knowledge-sharing held in conjunction with the exhibition 'Mothernizing ANA: Who Cares for the Future?' The symposium is co-organized by Lise Haller Baggesen and Deirdre M. Donoghue and is co-hosted by Astrid Noacks Ateliers and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

m/other voices foundation invites you for the talk 'Mothers in Art - Dynamic Shifts' together with Dyana Gravina, founder of Procreate Project and the Mother House in London and Csilla Klenyánszki, who initiated at the Mothers in Arts Residency ( MA residency) program in Amsterdam. Both Dyana and Csilla will give further information about their projects, their experiences and future plans. After the discussion moderated by m/other voices, there will be a screening of The Mother House documentary.

Dyana Gravina is conceptual artist, producer and founder of the Procreate Project, a platform born in response to the urge of creating a new model of art organization that would come in support of women artists during pregnancy and motherhood, highlighting the positivity and creating a new awareness around motherhood and dynamic shifts in society and creative industries. One of its most recent initiative is called the 'Mother House', the first flexible artist studio with integrated childcare, where children are invited into the workspace.

Csilla Klenyanszki is a visual artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. She founded the Mothers in Arts Residency. The idea of this project comes from my her experiences, which are based on the first year of motherhood, the social and the daycare situation in the Netherlands & my particular situation as an emigrant artist, without a family network. She is currently running the 'MA residency' program, which invites emerging women artists to work in the studio when their child is between 3 months to 2 years old. The residency is designed around the childcare policies of the Netherlands: 3 months is the given maternity leave and 2 years is the minimum age, when children are provided with 2 days a week subsidized daycare.

THE MOTHERHOOD ARCHIVESArchival montage, science fiction, and an homage to 70s feminist filmmaking are woven together to form this haunting and lyrical essay film excavating hidden histories of childbirth in the twentieth century. Assembling an extraordinary archive of over 100 educational, industrial, and medical training films (including newly rediscovered Soviet and French childbirth films) THE MOTHERHOOD ARCHIVES (2013, 91 min.) inventively untangles the complex, sometimes surprising genealogies of maternal education. From the first use of anesthetic ether in the 19th century to the postmodern 21st century hospital birthing suite, THE MOTHERHOOD ARCHIVES charts a fascinating course through the cultural history of pain, the history of obstetric anesthesia, and the little-known international history of the natural childbirth and Lamaze movements. Revealing a world of intensive training, rehearsal, and performative preparation for the unknown that is ultimately incommensurate with experience, THE MOTHERHOOD ARCHIVES is a meditation on the maternal body as a site of institutional control, ideological surveillance, medical knowledge, and nationalist state intervention. Finally, the film works as a feminist recuperation of obsolete maternal histories, as a visual analysis of the persistent disciplining of the pregnant / laboring body, and as a new, contemporary counter-archive of women’s experiential narratives.

IRENE LUSZTIG is a filmmaker, visual artist, archival researcher, and amateur seamstress. Her film and video work mines old images and technologies for new meanings in order to reframe, recuperate, and reanimate forgotten and neglected histories. Often beginning with rigorous research in archives, her work brings historical materials into conversation with the present day, inviting the viewer to explore historical spaces as a way of contemplating larger questions of politics, ideology, and the production of personal, collective, and national memories. Born in England to Romanian parents, Irene grew up in Boston and has lived in France, Italy, Romania, China, and Russia. She received her BA in filmmaking and Chinese studies from Harvard and completed her MFA in film and video at Bard College. Her debut feature film, Reconstruction (2001) was recognized with a Boston Society of Film Critics Discovery award and won best documentary at the New England Film Festival. Her work has been screened around the world, including at MoMA, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archive, Flaherty NYC, IDFA Amsterdam, and on television in the US, Europe, and Taiwan. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, Massachusetts Cultural Council, LEF Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts, and Sustainable Arts Foundation and has been awarded fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, the Flaherty Film Seminar, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Harvard’s Film Study Center. She is the 2016-17 recipient of a Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship. She teaches filmmaking at UC Santa Cruz where she is Associate Professor of Film and Digital Media; she lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

DEIRDRE M. DONOGHUE is a visual and performance artist, director of m/other voices foundation for art, research, theory / dialogue / community involvement, PhD researcher at The Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Utrecht University, a mother and a birth doula.

Kirsten Schötteldreier is a singer, voice and performance coach, theatre-maker and 'energy trainer'.

“I started by singing in jazz formations, rock bands and as a studio singer. In my personal search for ever deeper musical layers, I began to study singing and direction at the Folkwang Conservatory in Essen, Germany. Being interested in more art forms than just opera, I chose to study in Essen where Pina Bausch was teaching young dancers, and were actors, singers and dancers were all being trained under the same roof. Moving to The Netherlands I sang more and more in modern pieces, including opera on location and in the theatre. I also participated in dance performances and started to make my own pieces like 'Lost Land', 'Verdriet', 'Closed' and 'Grenzgebiete'. These are pieces mainly about loosing home-ground due to war, political changes and globalization. After a period of health issues that affected my voice, I began attending Chi Kung classes in Malaysia, Germany and Russia. Chi Kung has become an important part of the voice training that I now offer and I use it with singers all over Europe in order to improve and stabilize a ‘high level’ and more authentic way of singing. In the last years I advice and work more and more in Opera, Theatre and Dansproductions for houses like o.a.Staatsoper Wien München , Berlin , Paris , Theater an der Wien ( Coach Young Ensemble ) & Bayreuther Festspiele to create a good balance between the vocal, scenic and musical needs of each production. ” ”

Location:Broodplaats X&YSpaarndammerstraat 301013 Amsterdam

Getting there:From Amsterdam Central Station, a five minute bus ride: Bus no: 18, in the direction of Slotervaart. Get out at Haarlemmerplein from where it takes another 5 minute walk to get to Broodplaats X&Y. Alternatively:Tram no:3 from city centre. Get out at Haarlemmerplein.

During The International Film Festival Rotterdam: IFFR 2017, m/other voices holds a Field Trip with Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, to talk and share creative insights brought forth by her practices as a mother and a film maker. As part of the Field Trip we will be screening her work Mothertime. (For more information scroll below.)

Kristy Guevara-Flanagan teaches courses on documentary filmmaking at the School of Theater, Film and Television. Her first feature-length film was an acclaimed documentary covering four years in the lives of four adolescent girls. Going on 13 was an official selection of Tribeca, Silverdocs, and many other film festivals worldwide. It received funding from ITVS and was broadcast on public television in 2009. Guevara-Flanagan has also produced and directed several short films, including El Corrido de Cecilia Rios, winner of the Golden Gate Award for Best Bay Area Short Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival, a chronicle of the violent death of 15-year-old Cecilia Rios. It was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and subsequently broadcast on the Sundance Channel. Her most recent feature, Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines, traces the evolution and legacy of the comic book hero Wonder Woman as a way to reflect on society's anxieties about women's liberation. The film garnered numerous awards, premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2012 and was broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens in 2013. Guevara-Flanagan received her M.F.A. in cinema from San Francisco State University.

Mothertime

Embracing the innovative technology of the Go-Pro camera, Mothertime is an essayistic portrait sweeping us into a corporeal experience in parenting. By using a very small, portable camera worn by mother and child, or left on any surface and turned on and off remotely, this video is a real-time, sensorial journey spanning the frenetic to mundane. Set primarily amidst scenes of domestic life in their first home, the camera captures the whimsical, ordinary, sometimes claustrophobic repeating loops of work and play in daily life. The audience is drawn into the raw and messy reality of the mother-daughter relationship as the markers of toddlerhood become the turning points of the film itself. Early mobility, language acquisition, and increasing independence play out as preparation for the move from one house to another. Like a feminist Leviathan, the video aims to disrupt expectations as the audience itself embodies the mother-child. Ultimately,Mothertime breaks down the distinction between artist and corporeal mother and invites the viewer to do the same. To see the labor of motherhood as neither romanticized nor banal.

"My work is photography based. I approach everything as a child, without prejudice, with fully opened eyes. The work relays on common objects and by researching their unusual potential, I introduce a new function to them. A game with the laws of physics, kitchen chemistry and elementary school science experiments are involved during the process. A constant attraction to physical tension characterizes my work. The sets I create are often fragile and require intense concentration during build up. The work plays with the borders of non-sense, something that looks foolish at first, always finds its right place in the end. I am currently working on a project, "Pillars of Home", one hundred - 30 minutes long - balancing sculptures, which I am doing within An Artist Residency of Motherhood, initiated by the artists Lenka Clayton. These floor-to-ceiling constructions relay on their own inner stability while being framed only by the floor and the ceiling. The in situ installations are being made during my son's naps, when our home becomes a studio for no more than a half an hour."

Shira Richter is a feminist artist, independent scholar and artivist. She is the director of an award winning adventure film 'Two States of Mind' about women's and mother's voices regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, creator of photography exhibitions and installations about the value and status of mothers in society, a writer, visual performance lecturer, curator and advocate for gentle and ethical communication. Her projects act as an interface- or "multi-bridge" between academic knowledge, art, and contemporary activism. "Walking the Talk in my everyday life is the challenge". She lives in Israel with her partner, two children and three cats.

Margret Wibmer is an international artist and educator who received her art education at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. After her studies she was based in New York City for many years. Since 1990 she has been based in Amsterdam. Margret Wibmer works systematically on the border between art and fashion, employing different media such as performance, photography, video and sculpture. The past couple of years she has been focusing on developing participatory performances that involve museum visitors as actors. Her works have been shown in galleries and museums in Europe, the US and Asia, including KAI 10 – Arthena Foundation in Düssedorf; RMIT Design Hub in Melbourne; Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, Ishikawa Nishida Kitaro Museum of Philosophy in Japan and Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Currently she is investigating alternative ways of artistic production and is part of the MA program ‘Fashion Matters’ at Sandberg Institute. http://margretwibmer.eu

An Excursion to visit the exhibition Queensize, a curated selection of works by female artists from the Thomas Olbricht Collection. Queensize has previously been shown at me Collectors Room Berlinand is curated by Nicola Graef (documentary film producer and director) and Wolfgang Schoppmann (chief curator of the Olbricht Collection).

The visit to the exhibition will be followed by lunch and discussion over the exhibition and its framing of female experience, amongst other topics that come forth from the visit.

To register for the excursion and for more detailed information please send an email to info@mothervoices.org by Monday, the 25th of April.

Within the context of The Mothernists conference, the m/other voices foundation kindly invites artist Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki (GR) to share her research project, titled "The Island which is folded like dry bread."

''The Island which is folded like dry bread'' takes place throughout three separate readings, each being hosted in a different space in Rotterdam: a gallery and its pavement, inside a botanical garden, and on the square in front of a communal reading room.

During the events the different groups are invited to listen to the story and after this we construct a temporal and transportable island. Throughout the interplay of the group a new reading is possible for ourselves and for the viewer passing by.

The story is read by Brenda A. van Zanten in Dutch, the rest of the hour would be in both English and Dutch.All the materials are provided.

>Reservation is required, open to all ages, preferably come with a member of your family or a close friend.>Free entry. Please reserve at: mothervoicesfoundation@gmail.com, subject line 'Reading'

Field Trip # 10 with the Arnhem based, North American musician, educator, certified deep listening trainer and Associate Editor of The Journal of Sonic Studies Sharon Renee Stewart

Location: Bezoekerscentrum Veluwezoom National ParkDate: 10. 5. 2015Time: 1pm-5pm, when we arrive (at the latest) back at the Veluwezoom Bezoekerscentrum.Getting there: Car pooling & public transportFood: Please bring with you a packed lunch for the day.There are also four restaurants in the area. For those with children it is recommended to make reservations as it could be very busy on a Sunday. The restaurants are: De Deel, De Ruijf, Prinsheerlijk and Pannekoekhuis Stijland. Attention: Family welcome for separate activity at Mother's Day Deep Listening Walk in the beautiful Veluwezoom National Park. Children under the age of 6 will need a supervisor.

"During my mothering, I became fascinated by the non-verbal information that was provided by my child: the excitement in breath and heartbeat that proceeded feeding or communicative engagement; the endless possibilities of creating sounds with the lips, tongue, throat, hands and feet; the way my children would respond to melody and the incredible drive I felt to turn daily interactions into song and dance for them.

In the meantime my children have turned 12 and 9, and my practice is focused more on being aware of how our sound environment affects our interaction. How do I listen to them? How do I engage? When and how do I tune out? I am also becoming more aware of my own needs for quiet, for music and sound that feeds me energetically and for the space and time to listen to my inner voices, to follow the natural flow of movement in my body.

For this Mother’s Day Listening Walk, I would like to focus on and explore how listening to our (natural) environment can influence our perception of the world and our own perception of ourselves as a sensitive, vibrating body in the world. The field trip will, weather permitting, take place in the open air in the Veluwe. We will journey through the landscape, taking time to connect with our bodies, with the sounds around us and with our creative inner voices."

Sharon Stewart became certified in Deep Listening (DL), with Pauline Oliveros, IONE and Heloise Gold in 2011, after three European intensive retreats and two years of process work with listening meditations, body work and listening to dreams. Deep Listening was developed by composer and performer Pauline Oliveros. Oliveros herself describes DL as “listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what one is doing.” The practice includes bodywork, sonic meditations, interactive performance, listening to the sounds of daily life, nature, one’s own thoughts, imagination and dreams, and listening to listening itself. A Deep Listening practitioner explores the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary, selective nature – exclusive and inclusive – of listening. The process also develops an awareness of one’s listening habits: what one tunes into and what one tunes out. Sharon is now assisting Heloise Gold as mentor in the DL Certificate Program.

Sharon Stewart studied piano at the Utrecht School of the Arts, Faculty of Music, and later completed a Masters in Music Pedagogy at the Royal Conservatoire, The Hague. She has a private piano practice in Arnhem, has collaborated as sound artist with various dancers, and serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Sonic Studies. In her own creating and teaching, she holds and returns to balance, openness, stillness and spontaneity, while leaving space for the explosive, volatile and powerful forces of emotional expression. Sharon became certified in Deep Listening, with Pauline Oliveros, IONE and Heloise Gold in 2011 and has had significant personal experience with Core Energetic work, including a two-year training at Cordium, Nijmegen, 2008-2010.

PLEASE RESERVE: mothervoicesfoundation@gmail.com

ou can also join our Facebook page for further discussion and information:The /m/other voices project.

" I am active as a composer and as a piano teacher. In autumn 2013, my partner and I had a little girl... My compositional practice is very wide and multitasking; ranging from the very focused isolated actual composition process, to initiating, organizing and producing projects. This also includes running musical rehearsals, recordings and promoting my work up to making the graphic design of my scores for the publishing house. Besides that I am really enjoying teaching piano to children three days per week.

During the Field Trip, I will present my experiences of my first compositional process for the piece “Nachtwerk” after giving birth. I will particularly focus on the questions of How does maternal experience, practice and thinking effect ones methodology of production. How do these methodologies in turn effect what is produced?”

Nachtwerk was performed in seven cities last autumn. Samples of my work can be heard through my website:

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